"Freedom Is Not Given, It's Taken"
The Anarchives Volume 3 Issue 6
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--/\-- CRTechnocraCy
/ / \ \
---|--/----\--|--- Telecomm Legislation
\/ \/ and the
/\______/\ Demise of Democracy
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Today I told it to the 'Man'.
I stared down the regulatory authorites, and the members of the powerful
telecomm companies, and laid a critique stating that they were enacting
anti-democratic practicies.
As well I informed the 'authorities', that if they did not respect the
public interest, the public interest would not respect them, to the
possible extent of direct action.
The following is a written transcript of a presentation made for the CRTC
(Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) on Wednesday February
28 1996 on the subject of universal affordable access, specifically
access to local telephone services.
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Good morning, my name is Jesse Hirsh, I represent an Internet company
called Local GlobalAccess Inc. As we continue to propel ourselves into
the Information Age, access becomes the defining characteristic of the
shape and form of the Information society. As our name implies, we are
concerned with access, of all types, and at all levels. We are interested
in participating and ensuring, that universal access to information
technology exists and enables all members of our society to benefit from
their implementation.
I also represent the Toronto Information Highway Working Group, which is
itself a member of the Alliance for a Connected Canada, a nation-wide
alliance of public interest groups who are all determined to ensure that
the public interest remains an essential part of any emerging Information
Infrastructure.
Looking around the room, I also note that I seem to be the youngest
person here by at least 10 years. So I also feel I should say I represent
the 'youth', for in ending my preface, I warn the Commission and the
parties to this hearing that I'm now going to present an argument that
may seem outrageous to present company, but I assure you that among my
peers, I represent the norm.
My concern is democracy.
As Steve Forbes buys the American Presidency, I ask where is democracy?
I grew up in a sheltered environment, educated in the isolated
institution of the university, where my teachers led me to believe that I
lived in a democracy.
In participating in this CRTC hearing, I hoped to be involved in a
democratic decision-making process, an opportunity to receive a
first-hand education in the real world. What I've experienced so far has
been disillusionment at best, outrage as the norm.
In this morning's opening remarks, the commissioner stated that the
purpose of this hearing was to, "allow the public to participate."
As I look around in this room however, I do not see the public, but a
collection of technical experts who are themselves members of a technical
elite.
I intended to participate in this process, as a means of exercising my
democratic rights.
However I have since been bombarded with over 12 pounds of documents, 400
pages of faxes, which almost burnt out my fax machine, outside of the
responsibility of researching background documents. Out of all these
documents, I was only able to understand a third of it, as much of it was
encoded in telecommunications legalese, technical jargon, and archaic
pricing indicators. As a student of communications I was barely able to
extract any sense from this sea of submissions. I can only guess the
trouble a 'layperson' would have trying to participate in this 'public'
process. In fact my effort put into understanding these documents has
almost raised me to the level of technical elite.
If this isn't actually a public process, is it then a democratic one?
I fear that the actions taken as a result of this hearing will enable the
subversion of our democratic rights, as they are supplanted and replaced
with consumer rights.
Clearly an anti-democratic action.
Democratic rights are inherent and unlimited. You always have them, and
you can always exercise them, at least in a democracy.
Consumer rights on the other hand are not inherent and they are limited.
They are based upon the pay-per-use model, as your rights are determined
in relation to your participation in the economic marketplace. Thus the
more you pay the more you play.
Consumer rights are inherently unequal, as we live in an inherently
inequal economic system. Consumer rights subvert democratic rights by
introducing a quantitative factor, achieving a finite definition of our
entitled rights, and limiting the extent to which we may exercise them.
The underlying agenda of these current CRTC hearings, is to introduce a
new rate for local telecommunication services. The telephone companies
are proposing to introduce a local rate restructuring based upon the
pay-per-use model.
Universal access to the technology will exist, but the use of the
technology will be limited.
Democracy depends upon free and open access to information, which becomes
severely limited, if not negated by proposed pay-per-use pricing structures.
The Commission in a previous decision, stated that local rate-rebalancing
was an essential step in enabling full competition among the local
telephone market. Similarly the phone-companies are stating that
pay-per-use is also an integral part of local competition.
With the recent American Telecommunications Act, the United States has
effectively opened up the local phone markets for competition. Robert E.
Allen, Chairman and C.E.O. of AT&T after the passing of the bill said,
"The fast lane has opened up", referring to the accelerated market
activity that will accompany competition.
President Bill Clinton said, "This bill protects consumers against
monopolies."
Unfortunately it does not protect _citizens_ from monopolies.
The U$ Telecommunications legislation removes regulation, and introduces
double-speak 'competition', freeing monopolies to compete with each other
across areas of local and long-distance markets. The double-speak comes
in the fact that you need billions of dollars to compete in the first place.
I mean hey, I'd love to have a telephone company, but nobody's going to
give me the billions of dollars necessary to sucessfully operate it.
The telecommunications industry is inherently a monopoly. Theoretically,
we should only have _one_ wire connected to our home. Traditionaly,
telecomm monopolies have been held in check by public institutions.
However as agents of the private sector, privatize what remains of our
slashed public institutions, and free-trade dismantles our national
tariffs, regulation of telecom monopolies becomes technically impossible.
In a knee-jerk reaction, monopolies are de-regulated to encourage
competition. However what we are witnessing is not a competition among
equals, or even a competition amongst oligopolies. Rather we see the
battle of monopolies, a competition to become the new monopoly.
Competition among the telecommunications industry translates directly
into concentration of the industry. In the short time since the US
Telecomm legislation was passed, NYNEX and Bell Atlantic have announced
mergers, and US West has enacted a $US 5.8 Billion dollar merger with
Continental Cablevision, a major US cable company. It's no wonder that
telecomm competition is referred to as 'the waltz of elephants'.
In the Canadian context, the national monopoly Stentor, consistently
practices anti-competitive behaviour. I say this from the perspective of
a young man who has been involved in operating an Internet company. We
were operating in the Internet industry months before the phone companies
decided to make their entrace to the market. Due to their 'publicly
supported' monopoly, they have been able to quickly attain a dominant
position in the market, fuelled by their conglomerate
cross-subsidization, in tandem with vast marketing and human resources.
In the wake of their entry, the Internet Industry has seen a flash of
mergers and acquisitions in which a market once populated by numerous
small players, increasingly becoming a market dominated by conglomerates.
As a small business, we can barely hope to survive amidst such an
uncompetitive environment.
Over the last few days before this current hearing, I had been debating
with myself whether or not to attend, as I felt that my actions and
remarks here would be futile.
The CRTC has consistently demonstrated their position as being in the
'back pocket of the phone companies'. In the rare exception where the
CRTC has ruled against the dominant telecomm interest, their decisions
have been overturned by the Federal Cabinet.
Similarly the other 'public' body that has a mandate to deal with these
issues, the Information Highway Advisory Council, is also dominated by
telecomm interest, with 28 of it's 30 members drawn from the private sector.
I decided to make my presentation to the Commission this morning, because
I was not going to be the one to negate my democratic rights.
The onus is on the Commission to prove my fears otherwise, and
demonstrate that not only is this a public and democratic process but
that all Canadian interests are taken into consideration.
The Commission needs to realize that the technological changes we are
currently undergoing affect us all equally. If we as a nation, wish to
enter the next millenium with a stable and equitable society, we must
include all Canadians views in the decisions that will form our
Information Infrastructure.
I offer warning to the Commission, that if it persists in ignoring the
interests of the public, and continues to grant concessions to the cartel
of powerful telecomm interests, the increasing frutstrations of an
alienated citizenry could blow up in all of our faces.
Here again I explicitly refer to my own experiences with the technology,
and the success I've had with my peers, in using the technology for our
own purposes.
We are witnessing a phenomenon in which the younger members of our
society are making dramatic gains in the use and implementation of
information technology. It is not unreasonable to suggest that if the
established authorities, in this case the CRTC, do not meet the interests
of the public (i.e. do not meet the democratic interests), the public
will take the technology into their own hands.
If you (the CRTC) enact barriers that deter our inherent democratic
rights, we will go around or through those barriers as a means of
reclaiming our democracy.
Thank You.
The Commission responded by trying to defend the role of the individuals
working within the CRTC, however I quickly responded by saying that I did
not place any blame on the individuals within the organization, but the
organization itself, and the context in which it operates.
I recognize that within the context of diminishing public funds, the CRTC
is inherently limited, and therefore also the avenues of possible action.
I sympathized with the shared feeling of futility.
The feeling that change within the system is futile...
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/
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